 David
Irving comments: JEFF GERMAN was a polite enough
journalist and, yes, somewhat younger than
myself; I had misheard his name to be
Gammon, and I had had no qualms about
meeting him as I doubted that one of the
Traditional Enemy would be called Gammon
of all things.
But having met him I
decided he could be objective, and invited
him to attend; his objective and well-
reported story shows my decision to be
largely vindicated.
As for slipping quietly
into the town, I do not advertise my means
of travel or the place I am staying, for
self-evident reasons. |
Tuesday, December 9, 2003 Columnist
Jeff
German:
Holocaust denier
slips into town IF YOU sit down and chat with
David Irving, he comes across as anyone's
grandfather. He is charming, educated and easy to
engage in conversation, particularly about World
War II. But behind this facade is the world's most
recognizable Holocaust denier -- a 65-year-old
London author who does not believe that 6 million
Jews perished in Nazi death camps during World War
II. His position on the Holocaust has won him
anti-Semitic friends in the national white
supremacist movement, such has David Duke,
the jailed former leader of the Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan in Louisiana. And it has landed him on
government watch lists and made him the archenemy
of such organizations as the Anti-Defamation
League and the Alabama-based Southern Poverty
Law Center, which fight bigotry and hate groups.
Irving, who has written 30 historical books,
including his best known "Hitler's
War," slipped into town as quietly as he could
for a rare speaking engagement in the shadow of the
Las Vegas Strip Monday night
[December 8,
2003] on his latest national tour. His visit didn't go totally unnoticed, however.
It caught the attention of the local
Anti-Defamation League, law enforcement authorities
and this writer, who interviewed him for an hour at
the Hard Rock Hotel's "Lucky Seven" coffee shop
prior to his talk across the street at the St.
Tropez Hotel. Irving told me that he found the
subject of the Holocaust "boring" and of no
historical interest to him. But when asked, he was
quick to give his opinion on the extent of the
extermination of the Jews. He acknowledged that the Germans carried out
mass shootings of Jews on the war's Eastern Front
in Poland. "There were individual operations where
20,000 or 30,000 Jews were killed at a time over
several days on the Eastern Front," he said.
"However, the other part of the story, which is the
factories of death, the mass extermination gas
chambers -- a lot of that story doesn't wash. It's
based on the evidence of a very slim number of eye
witnesses, most of whom are highly discredited when
you read all of their evidence." Irving suggested the 6 million figure, validated
at the post-war Nuremberg Trials, was a "symbolic"
figure and that only one-tenth the number of Jews
actually died in Nazi concentration camps. His
words, of course, are contradicted by voluminous
documentation of Nazi atrocities during the war.
But Irving seemed to relish giving an opinion that
doesn't conform to society's view. In the
interview, and later when he spoke to a small crowd
of followers at the St. Tropez, Irving said he was
proud that he has been able to "generate the kind
of hostility" that has gotten him kicked out of
countries and his books banned from bookstores and
libraries. The Anti-Defamation League devotes an entire
section to Irving on its website, saying he has
"sought to rehabilitate the image of the Nazi
regime" throughout his writing career. The section
concludes by suggesting that Irving "remains
probably the most lucid expositor of history in
which [Adolf]
Hitler was benevolent, the Allies despotic
and Jews the perpetrators of their own phony
genocide." Irving, meanwhile, told me he is firmly
convinced that long after he dies, he will be
proven right.  He
barely mentioned the Holocaust during his talk at
the St. Tropez. He discussed his exploits writing
about Hitler and his latest book in the works, a
biography of Heinrich Himmler, who headed
the Nazi dictator's feared Gestapo. Then Irving
moved to the subject of the war in Iraq and his
belief that the Bush administration has misled the
American people and gotten itself into a war it
can't win. He accused the administration of
mounting a propaganda campaign aimed at drumming up
support for the war, suggesting at one point that
the well-publicized tearing down of the statue of
Saddam Hussein in Baghdad shortly after American
troops arrived was nothing but an American
government hoax.
THE St. Tropez was not the original location for
Irving's talk. He had come to Las Vegas on Saturday
from a speaking engagement in Phoenix and planned
to hold a discussion that evening at the Casa Di
Amore Italian restaurant on East Tropicana Avenue.
Paul Schiada, the restaurant's co-owner,
said he was alerted to Irving's background and
asked him to give his talk somewhere else. Schiada
said his restaurant later received a couple of
harassing phone calls from Irving supporters,
including one who asked whether "the Jews" were
responsible for the cancellation. Irving eventually persuaded the St. Tropez,
where he stayed, to give him a small partitioned
room in the back of the property Monday night.
Before his talk, which lasted about two hours,
Irving set up a table and sold a half-dozen or so
of his books. He said he sells the books to help
finance his speaking tour. Sometimes, he said, he
runs into trouble on the speaking circuit when
members of the Jewish community try to disrupt his
talks. As a result, he said, he generally is
particular about whom he lets into meetings. Most
people have to sign up on his website and divulge
personal information about themselves. Irving explained that he rarely lets reporters
hear him speak, and though I have no way of telling
whether this is true, he said Monday's interview
was the first he had granted to a journalist in
this country in 20 years. I'll have more on my chat
with Irving, plus reaction, this week. At the St.
Tropez, a mixed group of 21 people each paid $22 to
eat a catered dinner of steak or chicken with
potatoes and chocolate cake for desert. There were
men and women, teenagers and seniors, skin-head
types and businessmen and even retired military
officers in attendance. No one wanted to identify
themselves or be quoted in the newspaper. You could tell you were among people who don't
appreciate minorities, but for the most part, aside
from casual references to "the Jews" by both Irving
and his supporters, there was not a lot of racist
talk. The meeting-goers were polite and well aware
that a journalist was in their presence.
Afterwards, however, some complained that law
enforcement authorities were taking their pictures
and watching them walk into the meeting, where they
insisted they merely were exercising their right to
free speech. When Irving finished his talk, he
collected money for the dinner from his guests and
then packed up his books. He said he planned to
drive to Los Angeles for his next speaking
engagement, hoping to leave as quietly as he
arrived. Previous Las Vegas Sun stories about
David Irving: 18
Apr, 2000 | 20
Apr, 2000 | 30
Oct, 1997 
David
Irving speaking tour details
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